The Buzz

At the current reliability, Ford’s cats only have “a 9 percent chance of completing the 4-day surge and a 70 percent chance of completing a day of sustained operations as defined in the design reference mission without a critical failure.” That’s on a good day, with a deck full of trained-up sailors; the Ford class was designed to reduce manning requirements but is “sensitive to manpower fluctuations” simply because the next-generation technologies it embraces “are not well understood,” the report states

The United States had not yet entered World War II when Time magazine noted that the Army had created two new armored divisions. The commander of one of the divisions, said the magazine, was worthy of note. Selected to command the 3rd Armored Division “was an alert, progressive officer with an old Army name: Brigadier General Alvan Cullom Gillem, Jr.”The magazine was right to notice. Gillem was destined to help change the U.S. Army forever.

The Glock 17 handgun shook up the gun industry in a big way. Gaston Glock’s polymer pistol masterpiece, with its emphasis on ruggedness and reliability, swept the military and law-enforcement world and conquered the civilian market. Slowly, the company has introduced new handguns, all based on the original design, to compete in virtually every niche of the handgun market, from large-bore semiautomatics to discreet concealed carry. Here are five of Gaston Glock’s best designs.

After World War II, the U.S. Navy scrambled to field its own jet fighters—but designing a warplane that could fly dramatically faster while still landing on a short carrier deck proved a challenge. The Navy’s first operational jet, the underpowered FH Phantom, was retired after only two years of service.

China has built some islands in the South China Sea. Can it protect them?

During World War II Japan found that control of islands offered some strategic advantages, but not enough to force the United States to reduce each island individually. Moreover, over time the islands became a strategic liability, as Japan struggled to keep them supplied with food, fuel and equipment. The islands of the SCS are conveniently located for China, but do they really represent an asset to China’s military? The answer is yes, but in an actual conflict the value would dwindle quickly.

Major Graf Von Kielmansegg, an officer in Germany’s 1st Armored Division based near Orleans, France, was dragged from a cinema on the night of August 28, 1940, and told to report to his chief of staff. “As I entered his office I was sure that we were finally going to be told that Sea Lion had been given the green light. I asked, ‘Are we on our way?’ He said, ‘Yes, we’re on our way but not to England, to East Prussia.’ So then we knew Sea Lion was a dead duck.”

Storming a beach under a hail of gunfire has never been easy for the Marine Corps. But with rapid advances in technology, they now have to contend with precision missiles and other fearsome air and coastal defenses that make an already dangerous mission even riskier.

Just before he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, the German officer penned a final note.

"For a captain with a sense of honor, it goes without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from that of his ship," wrote Hans Langsdorff on December 19, 1939, in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. Langsdorff finished his letter to the Nazi ambassador to Argentina, lay down on a German battle flag, and shot himself.

On April 25, 2003 the crew of a Chinese fishing boat noticed a strange sight—a periscope drifting listlessly above the surface of the water. The fishermen notified the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) which promptly dispatched two vessels to investigate.

At first the PLAN believed the contact to be an intruding submarine from South Korea or Japan. But when Chinese personnel finally recovered the apparent derelict they realized it was one of their own diesel-electric submarines, the Ming-class 361.